Donald Barthelme Overview
born: 1931
born in: Philadelphia, PA
died: 1989
It should seem patently absurd that Donald Barthelme is currently undergoing a period of rediscovery. It was only in 1963 that his first prose piece was published, and by the mid-60s he had established himself as a writer – particularly of... [more]
It should seem patently absurd that Donald Barthelme is currently undergoing a period of rediscovery. It was only in 1963 that his first prose piece was published, and by the mid-60s he had established himself as a writer – particularly of short stories – of tremendous potential, having generated no small swell of excitement; by the time of his death, less than three decades later, his name had become nearly synonymous with fiction at its most innovative, at once playful and demanding. He had become the preeminent Postmodernist writer, although he publicly derided both the term as applied to his work and the movement. How, a mere few decades later, he has waned along the public literary horizon enough to have this current renewed interest seem a rediscovery is more indicative of the whims and wends of literary fashions than of the writer himself. But that he ever, in a sense, "disappeared" from the public view – a debatable suggestion, and one that would be strongly rejected by a fair many – seems a justified position, considering how vital he had once been to a then-thriving literary and experimental American moment. Whether he will again dissipate from public view remains to be seen; for the moment, his work is being reinvestigated with a fervor reminiscent of the exhilaration his publications first aroused.
Barthelme's earliest short stories came onto the 1960s literary scene as fresh, plucky babes whose referentiality and insouciant allusions managed, through the lively and inventive mind of their creator, to create works of considerably novel appeal. Today, many of his stories may read as somewhat dated, the referentiality and allusions that defined his status as a rebellious newcomer now weighted and obscured by the nearly innumerable disciples and imitators who have mined his style and weltanschauung. As the most radical of Postmodernist sensibilities have lost their novelty to the wider public – particularly after the much more financially successful short story movements headed by such writers as John Cheever and Raymond Carver –, many of his defining stylistic techniques may seem passé; the novelty of the ideas expressed through them and the wit behind his wordplay and formal experimentations, as evidenced by this resurgence of interest, are less easily dismissed as specifically of their time. With his cohort of similarly branded "Postmodernists" – among them Robert Coover, John Barth, William Gaddis, and William Gass –, with whose works much of his writing is in dialogue, he challenged traditional modes of narrative and methods of explication, telling stories through collage – a term he quite liked in discussing his own work, and one he also used to describe much of the work of Robert Rauschenberg, whose techniques he admired and career he fostered –, fragmentations, non sequiturs, repetition, accumulation, and a variety of other means.
His most-read work to date is "Sixty Stories," which compiles many stories – often reworked somewhat – from such earlier volumes as "City Life," "Sadness," "Amateurs," and "Overnight to Many Distant Cities." His most widely anthologized short story, "The Joker's Greatest Triumph," is included in his first story collection, "Come Back, Dr. Caligari" and a more recent compilation, "The Teachings of Don B."
But his career is not notable only for his invention and reinvention of literary tropes and methodologies – many may trace the contemporary short-short story and flash fiction to his earliest literary experimentations – and for having secured a commendable place in the 20th-century literary canon; he held and exerted great influence in the art world as the director of the Contemporary Arts Museum in Houston and also co-founded, with Mark Jay Mirsky and Max Frisch, the influential literary journal Fiction, still in print and still quite vital.
As with all artists whose work and stylistic and conceptual innovations are ascribed to a movement, often dubiously assembled and named, Barthelme's survival as a noted writer of import has wavered with public tolerance for and interest in Postmodernism. What this renewed interest in his work may prove is that Barthelme, however much he utilized what are now largely identified as Postmodernist tropes and however much his work depended upon and was in dialogue with that of his friends and contemporaries, is a singular writer whose myriad explorations were not – as is often contested of those ascribed the Postmodernist label – investigations of dead ends. Rather, his work is composed of theoretical, stylistic, and emotional probings that will yield, through continued considerations of his work and his many passionate disciples, newer investigations ever to come. [show less]
